Changes for v1.0.312 Beta are:
- Fixes threadsafe light initialisation
- Fixes shader state tables on addition
- Fixes crash bug when handling undefined materials
- Fixes HDR texture files being output incorrectly as verbatim textures

Changes for v1.51 are:
- the 64-bit version is now exclusively available for VIP members

Morph ToolKit is available for Max 6 to 2008 and costs $199. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.0.310 Beta are:
- Further fixes to subdivision surface detail vectors
- Fixes the plugin importer to correctly specify up vector for navigation code
- Further fixes to Max plugin
- Fixes a problem with the Frame buffer interface destructor
- Fixes a crash caused by missing light definitions
- Minor fixes to parser to support frame buffer definition from Max 2008
- Fixes handling of degeneracy in KDTree traversal
- Fixes calling the environment shader from within final gathering

TerraTools have announced that their commercial MAXScript LightRigger is now freeware. Thanks to John Swafford for giving away a useful tool like this! Now it's no longer a commercial MAXScript, I'll remove it from the database.

Softimage Co. has announced the start of a free 30-seat / 60-day trial promotion for its Alienbrain 8.1 asset management software. The promotion is being offered to demonstrate to game developers and production studios the full capabilities that an Alienbrain asset management pipeline provides. Trial licenses of Alienbrain for 60 days will include 25x Essentials for Artists and 5x Advanced. For more information look here.

Alienbrain is available for Max 8 to 2008 and pricing starts at $12,000. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v3.02 are:
- Adds support for the latest version of Ultimate Unwrap 3D

Changes for v1.9.1 are:
- The absorption problems in Beta 1.9 are now fixed
- Those situations where bump mapping was flipped are now fixed
- Those cases where MPDM choked on degenerate geometries have been fixed
- Mapped / opacity-mapped emitters are now fully supported
- Many workflow / stability issues in the plugins have been fixed

fryrender is available for Max 6 to 2008 and costs €795 for 1 master license and 2 slave licenses. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v4.0 are:
- Almost all parts of PolyBoost are now implemented in C++ (faster and more efficient)
- Adds tools to make a model symmetrical based on the symmetry of a picked model
- Texture Wrap wraps a texture around organic geometry with no seams and uniform texture scale
- Cavity Map creates a greyscale image showing concavity or convexity of a surface
- Density Map creates a greyscale image showing surface density relative to the rest of the surface
- Dust Map creates a greyscale image showing how much the surface is pointing in the world Z axis
- SubSurface Map creates a greyscale image showing an estimate of the thickness of the object
- SurfaceSelect selects concave or convex areas of a model
- SymmetrySelect selects subobjects in the mirror axis of a symmetrical model
- UV Space spaces UV edgeloops / UV vertices to make distances between vertices even
- StepLoop selects subobject loops between two selected subobjects
- PolyDraw now has an offset option to offset the created surface from the picked object
- You can now reinstall or upgrade Max without the need for a new serial number
- Adds support for keyboard shortcuts while a PolyDraw tool or PolyShift is active
- All move tools in PolyDraw are now constricted to the surface if a surface is used to draw on
- PolyStrips, PolyShapes and Splines now project onto the active surface when moving
- All selection / modelling tools now support EPoly modifier (except Draw section tools in PolyDraw)
- The Interface button images now conform to the text colour used in Max

This version of PolyBoost is available for Max 9 and 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), and costs $154. A demo version is available here.

This plugin contains 4 new procedural materials for Max: Wood, Noise, Tile and Distortion. All of them are 3D maps except for Tile. They will work with scanline, VRay, finalRender and Brazil (not mental ray).

Holomatix Ltd. have released a new beta version of their upcoming commercial interactive raytracer Rendition which now includes support for 32-bit Max 9 and 2008. This allows Rendition to be used as a renderer from within Max in a similar fashion to mental ray, but with the benefit of Rendition's progressive image generation.

You can download the beta version here.

Changes for v1.5.29 are:
- Modified exporter to sort skies before export
- Modified node animations to be relative to their parent (if any)
- Fixes a bug with the 'mesh' directory on the Scene Settings / Directories tab not saving correctly
- Adds support for the shader program auto constant 'time' extra parameter
- Adds a 'rendering distance' setting to General tab of the Object Settings dialog
- Adds rendering distance export for particle systems, billboard sets, planes, and entities
- Adds render queue export for terrain
- Removes the 'rendering distance' setting from 'Instanced / Static Geometry' helper objects
- Removes the scale setting from the Sky Plane tab page in the Object Settings dialog
- Modified the object type detection for Sky Box, Sky Dome, Sky Plane, Billboard and Plane
- Renamed the Particle System's 'File' setting to 'Name'
- Fixes a bug with the hardware buffer usage not being exported
- Fixes a bug with the custom parameters not being exported
- Fixes a bug with the way world planes were calculated
- Fixes a bug with mesh bones being exported as scene nodes

Changes for v1.43 are:
- Adds support for 64-bit Max 9 and 2008

Changes for v8.1.4 are:
- Adds 64-bit support for Max 9 and Max 2008
- Adds a floating license option

All of the Craft Director Tools are now available for 64-bit except for Craft Crawler Tracks, which is still being worked on.

Craft Director Tools are available for Max 6 to 2008 and cost between $99 and $995. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.0.8 are:
- Fixes a few crash bugs related to tablet loading/unloading, object import/exort, and 64 bit fileIO

LipService with LBrush is available for Max 8 to 2008 and costs $395. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.0.7 are:
- Hidden geometry no longer slows down sculpting
- Brush tool is now 7 times faster than 2.0.0
- Adds a 'hide unselected' button
- Adds a 'flatten' brush
- Fixes a couple of bugs

LipService with LBrush is available for Max 8 to 2008 and costs $395. A demo version is available here.

TerraTools have announced that their commercial MAXScript LightRigger will soon be completely free. The installers have got to be reworked, and the copy protection has to be removed. The new installers will also include more and better sky maps. I'll post the news here when it is available.

Changes for v2.20 are:
- No changes, just adds support for Max 9 and Max 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Changes for v5.14 are:
- The plugin has been compiled against the new version of the PathEngine SDK

groundExport is part of the PathEngine SDK, and is available for Max 6 to 2008. A basic license for the SDK costs €5000.

Changes for v2.7.0.31 are:
- Fixed the handling of ExtendedData attributes for Max objects with a non-trivial modifier stack
- Fixed the handling of Point4 attributes in Max
- Other non-Max-specific fixes. The changelog is available here.

Granny Exporter is available for Max 6 to 2008, and is part of the Granny Toolkit which costs $12500.

Changes for v4.026 are:
- Adds support for the release version of Brazil 2
- The Mental Ray compatibility shader is now auto installed if mr is detected as the renderer
- Fixes the visibility set manager throwing a .NET ui error when deleting visibility sets
- Xrefs RPM pass restoring no longer triggers a .NET UI error on load
- Fixes a MAXScript error when using 'save RPM data' in certain circumstances
- Xrefs are now correctly saved/loaded when using the save and load RPM data
- Fixes RPM occasionally displaying the wrong tab when opened

This version of RPManager is available for Max 9 and 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit), and costs $300. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v3.603 are:
- Adds support for the release version of Brazil 2

This version of RPManager is available for Max 6 to 2008 (32-bit only) and costs $300. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v2.5 are:
- the 64-bit version is now exclusively available for VIP members

Voice-O-Matic is available for Max 6 to 2008 and costs $349. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.5.27 are:
- Adds 64-bit builds for Max 9 and 2008
- Modified the installation tool to support 64-bit installations
- Modified mesh bounds generation to sample skinned meshes to cover the mesh for all of its animation
- Modified the Max morpher mesh export to automatically ignore any morph target meshes
- Modified the OgreMax Material Viewer window to use the scene's up axis setting
- Modified the OgreMax Material Viewer window to use the scene's tangent/binormal settings
- Fixes the Node Animation dialog crashing Max when adding an animation in the Object Settings dialog

Changes for v1.5.26 are:
- Adds manual LOD settings to Mesh tab of Object Settings dialog
- Adds query flag settings to both the Scene and Object Settings dialogs
- Adds a rotation value to terrain export so it has correct orientation when exported with Z-up axis
- Adds instructions to the documentation describing how to uninstall OgreMax
- Modified the Entity and Entity Animation tabs, renaming them to Mesh and Mesh Animation
- Fixes a bug with the incorrect object type sometimes being used when exporting

The latest new build of Brazil r/s v2.0 / v2.1b, build 1488, is now available from the SplutterFish FishMarket Account (if you have upgraded to Brazil r/s v2.0). You can find a full list of enhancements and bugfixes here.

Brazil r/s v2.0 is available for Max 4 to 2008 and pricing starts at $795 for the Basic Edition, and $995 for the Professional Edition.

Changes for v1.03 are:
- Window size and properties of the exported .exe files are now customizable
- Changes made to bitmap files are now updated automatically
- Changes made to environment variables are now updated automatically
- The viewport update speed has been drastically increased for large scenes
- The viewport nows start automatically
- The web exporter now creates a template .html file that can be viewed locally
- Fixes application names containing non-filename characters not being published / exported
- Adding interactive keys for the click-vr viewport no longer causes problems with Max key bindings
- The viewport no longer crashes after deleting objects
- Fixes a viewport bug which occurred after pressing File-SaveAS
- Max no longer crashes when trying to create a second viewport

Click-VR Visualizer is available for Max 5 to 2008 and costs €1,180. A demo version is available here.

This plugin is the perfect tool for quickly and easily creating shooting effects, fragments and exploding geometry objects. It creates realistic physical interaction of objects with bullets using Reactor, and can automatically subdivide impact faces, create detailed animated dents using displace space warps, create holes, destruct impact objects piece by piece in real time, and much much more.

RayFire Tool is available for Max 9 and 2008, and costs $195. A demo version is available here.

Changes for v1.0 are:
- Fixes a bug when rendering with V-Ray and Backburner

Changes for v1.6.0.75 are:
- Fixes progress indicator hanging in multi-threaded rendering under Brazil2
- Adds support for Brazil2 bucket sizes

hairfx is available for Max 5 to 2008. Since it has been succeeded by Hairtrix, legacy users can download the latest build here.

Changes for v1.1 are:
- Adds support for exporting HL1 format unweighted SMD files
- Adds a crude but useable 'batch mode' for configuring / calling the plugin from MAXScript
- Fixes a bug with 'Export Selected'

Convexity allows for the rapid creation of game levels and buildings for architectural visualizations within Max. It also includes full exporters for the Valve .map format and the 3D Game Studio .wmp format, and works seamlessly with the Torque game engine. Convexity's new .cvx file format allows users to easily pass data between new and old versions of Max, i.e. you can easily give work that was created in Max 2008 to someone using Max 6.

Convexity is available for Max 5 to 2008 and costs $1500. No demo version is available, but there are some demo videos here.

Changes for v1.5.25 are:
- Track location can now be modified on existing mesh animations
- Fixes a bug with scene scale setting not saving correctly

Changes for v1.21 are:
- Adds support for Max 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Here's wishing everyone a Happy New Year! I hope you all have a healthy and prosperous one... Dave

If you were a registered user of Th0r or Druid from Sisyphus Software, I would love to hear from you! I've recompiled Th0r and Druid for Max 8 and 9, but due to licensing restrictions I can only give this update to registered users. Just send me an email with your name and serial number, and I will send you a copy of the update.

I will only be able to send this out to people who are on the list of registered users, so if you never bought either of the plugins, don't bother sending me a mail asking for it.